1996 Chevrolet Corvette Rear Passenger Side Wheel Bearing & Hub Assembly Timken 513020

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Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

In this video, we're going to show you a rear hub replacement on this 1985 Chevy Corvette. We're going to show you the right hand or passenger side, but the left hand driver side rear hub is the same procedure. You'll need a hub or hubs from 1AAuto.com, jack and jack stands, 19mm, 21mm, and 22mm sockets, you'll also need a 36mm socket and put a star next to that one because that's one that's usually in the toolbox, ratchet and extensions, breaker bar and/or a pipe for some extra leverage, T55 Torx driver, a hammer and a punch, pliers, torque wrench, and a flashlight. I use a pair of pliers to squeeze the cotter pin, sometimes it's just easier to twist and break it off, but squeeze the cotter pin and force it back through.

Start off by removing the lug covers just using a 19mm socket, and spin those lug covers off by hand. There's a washer or cap to pull off, and then use a 36mm or actually 1-7/16 socket and remove the nut, and you can do this with an impact wrench as I do, or have somebody hold the brakes and use a breaker bar and do it that way.

Now, there are two bolts that hold the caliper bracket assembly. One's very easy right there, and then one is kind of inside of a bracket, and you can see me pointing at the top of the screen right there. These bolts are 18mm, so you can see I'm just using a socket and a ratchet to get to that top one with a little bit of force and it comes off. Don't take it all the way out yet, you can take it most of the way out, but you want to leave it in to help out with the bottom one.

For the bottom one, you'll want to put on an 18mm wrench onto the bolt, and usually you need a little extra torque so I'm just going to hook on an additional wrench to the bottom, and that gives me extra leverage and I can get the bolt loose. Then this bottom one is just you can only turn it about an eighth of a turn at a time, and it's just kind of an exercise in patience to slowly get that bolt out. Once I have the bottom one, then I can return to the top one, remove it the rest of the way, and then pull the caliper and bracket assembly off and put it up to the side where it won't hang down.

Next, is to remove the disk. On the other side of this car the disk just pulled right off. This one was a little more difficult. Thread the lug nut on there just to make sure it doesn't go flying off, and then use the piece of wood to protect the disk. Once it starts moving, I can tell it's coming pretty easily so a hammer is not going to do any damage to it, I just tap it, move it to a couple of positions, and then shake it off. Remove the lug nut and pull the disk right off.

Now comes the fun. The hub is held by three Torx bolts. You can see one right below the U-joint there, and then one at the top corner, and then one right to the left of the drive shaft there. In order, to give you every chance, I used some penetrating oil and just spray the backside of the bolts. You can just access them in either behind the axle flange or through the holes in the hub. For good measure, I use an impact tool, line up the hole with the backside of the bolt, and pound it with a hammer a few times to help loosen up each bolt.

After dousing them with some penetrating oil and hammering them from the backside, these are T55 Torx bolts. I put the socket and the six inch extension. I'm using my breaker bar to just tap to get into the bolt and make sure it's seated really well. Then I put the 3/8 flex handle I'm using, and then I'm going to use a nice big piece of pipe to give me some extra leverage. Then you got to make sure that that Torx bit is in there well, and just keep adding pressure, adding pressure, and it breaks free.

Now go onto the next one, and you may find what you want to do is just break the bolts free first because you may need to just turn the drive shaft a little bit to be able to get the extension and Torx bit in. I disconnect the leaf springs, so lift it up first and then use pliers, straighten the cotter pin out, and then pull it. Then you'll use a 21mm wrench on top and 22mm wrench on the bottom and remove that bolt or nut. Then let this spring down to give yourself more access to the last bolt.

You need a half-inch ratchet, small extension, adapter, and T55. I'm pretty specific with the tools because there's limited space to get in there, but you can see I have a little trouble getting it in. You can see I put the jack underneath, sometimes changing the geometry of the suspension a little bit. That allows you to get the wrench in there better. I use a flashlight and finally get the Torx bit in and you can see it takes quite a bit of force to break the bolt loose, but once it's going it comes out.

You can see here I change over to an air ratchet and just get the bolts out the rest of the way. Right here I'm using a two-jaw puller. You put the teeth around the hub flange, and then the center goes onto the axle. Usually it comes off fairly easy, you may find that you can get it off without using this puller, because you can see I just use my hand, tighten it up a little bit, and the hub pulls right off. The hub assembly does come off with the backing plate and emergency brakes and everything. Then you just pull the hub up out of the backing plate and emergency brake.

New hub from 1A Auto. Make sure you hook your emergency brake cable to the lever that's on the back of the backing plate. Then put the hub back in place. If you saw earlier, the bolts are still up in there, so I put the hub in place and then get it on the axle. Then, basically just push the bolts through and start each one, just get each one started, and then just kind of trade off and continue to tighten each one up little by little. Now, I'm going to torque the top rear one to 65 foot-pounds, and, at this point, I've gotten them all on preliminarily tight, so I'm just torquing that first one.

Now we can remove the jack from underneath the suspension and put it back under the leaf spring. Then we raise it up in order to reconnect it to the link rod. We're going to reconnect the link here, so put the cushion back in place. On this car the nuts pretty much went on there no problem, and then tighten it up nice and firm. You basically just kind of keep looking, make sure you have the hole exposed for the cotter pin, and once you get it tight, and the hole is exposed for the cotter pin, you can reinsert the cotter pin and let your jack down.

Now with that leaf spring up and out of the way, it's actually easier to get to the lower rear one and the front one, so we'll torque those to 65 foot-pounds. Now we'll put the rear disk back on. Now we're just going to put the washer and the hub nut back on, and just tighten that up preliminarily. Now bring the brakes down and put them back on, and you'll want to start the top bolt first. It's the easiest one to get in, get that top bolt in, and you can tighten it up some and then actually don't tighten it, just get it in pretty well seated.

Then do the bottom bolt, and it just takes awhile doing it an eighth of a turn at a time. Once you're done, tighten them up, and you want to torque these to about 55 to 60 foot-pounds. I've set the emergency brake, and now I'm going to torque this to 160 foot pounds.

You can install the wheel. Put the lug nuts on finger first to make sure you don't cross thread them, and for those of you know you'll notice that we are putting a left hand wheel on the right hand side. That's because the tires were installed incorrectly, and we didn't have a tire changer to fix that. They're unidirectional tires, so we had to reinstall it this way. We'll just tighten those up preliminarily, and now we'll torque the lug nuts to 100 foot-pounds using a star pattern. Then re-install the lug nut covers. Finally, you want to make sure that you get in the car since you had the brakes apart. Pump the brakes a few times to make sure you have a nice firm petal before we test road the vehicle.

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